Motherwort

Value to bees

Nectar

Very high

Pollen

Moderate

As a honey crop

Minor honey crop — a surplus only locally or occasionally

Which bees, and why

The hooded two-lipped flower is the standard mint-family arrangement — a landing platform with the anthers above — so a visiting bee is dusted on the back every time. Worked by honey bees and carder bees together.

Worth knowing

A heavy nectar plant with a long season, widely recommended in Russian and Ukrainian beekeeping literature and largely overlooked elsewhere.

Flowering

In flower

June to August (northern hemisphere)

A long flowering by the standards of the family, which is what makes it useful rather than merely present.

When nectar flows

Generous and sustained through the summer, and it continues secreting in dry weather when many border perennials stop.

What it does to the honey

Gives a pale golden honey with a light herbal bitterness and a clean, slightly astringent finish.

Growing it

Conditions

Undemanding. Sun or part shade on any reasonably drained soil, and it tolerates drought once established.

Size

0.8-1.5 m.

Native range

Central Asia and southeastern Europe, naturalised very widely across Europe and North America on waste ground, hedge banks and old garden sites.

Suits

Large gardens, Meadow or wildflower area, Hedgerow

• It self-seeds enthusiastically and the spiny bracts make hand-weeding unpleasant. Site it where seedlings are acceptable.
• Cut back after the first flush for a lighter second flowering.

What it looks like

Square stems to a metre and a half, with deeply lobed lower leaves and whorls of small hooded pink-white flowers clustered tightly in the leaf axils up the stem, each backed by sharp spiny bracts.